Culture and Cocktails

Momentum Credit Limited (MCL) was re-born when they officially launched their new Onboarding program, with the support of the advisory services of Shortlist, a Nairobi-based recruiting and hiring a firm that helps companies build happy high-performing teams. The launch was held at Silver Spring Hotel. The theme of the evening was “Culture and Cocktails”.

Wambui Kuria, the Training & Development Officer, led the session for the evening guided by Mercy Njeri, Human Resource Officer. The event was graced by the line managers of MCL, all employees of MCL, Shortlist representatives and other esteemed guests.

Wambui began the interactive evening session by asking various Momentum employees to give their understanding of what onboarding meant to them.

“Getting to know what everyone in each department does and how we interact,” said one employee, while another added, “onboarding is induction.” A third told the audience that “onboarding matters for integration purposes.”

Here at Momentum, more than 70% of employees are new, meaning they were hired between January and August of this year. For that reason, Mercy noted the importance of onboarding since “we all come from different cultures and Momentum has its own culture.

Onboarding all of you enables us to significantly reduce frictions amongst ourselves as you adapt to Momentum’s way of life.’’

Momentum is committed to ensuring that its staff is happy, engaged and satisfied in order to realize the on boarding goals. As Wambui told MCL employees, the four main goals are:-

To Have Fun and Grow: Our Ethos is ‘Expanding Your Possibilities’. As an MCL member, your responsibility is to have fun and grow

Productivity: Statistics show that employees who complete a formal onboarding program have 62% higher time to productivity ratios

Wambui also wanted to dispel certain myths about initiating an onboarding process. First, that running a full onboarding program will cost a lot of money and time; but it actually saves money in the long-term. Additionally, while some may think of it as a two-day process, there are in fact 4 stages of the process, which takes several months in total. Wambui explained those stages as:

Pre-Onboarding: From the moment you confirm you are accepted to when you show up. It usually takes around 1 month.

Orientation phase: From day 1 to the end of your first week. Receive a lunch with a buddy, meet different people in the organization.

Onboarding: Between Week 1 to Week 4: Help to integrate and understand Momentum.

Development Plan: Between Months 2 to 4. After your probation period, there is a performance management system where you work with Momentum to help realize your professional potential.

Recently hired employees then shared the details of this experience in getting to understand Momentum’s mission and vision, as well as its value to their personal success at Momentum.

Job Muriuki, the CEO, shared that all Momentum employees can be part of the process: “As an organization, all of us, it is our duty to welcome and support new hires. Welcome them, smile, say hi and introduce yourself.”

Shortlist co-founder and Head of Advisory & Search, Simon Desjardins, shared just how unique it is to have such an onboarding process not just in Kenya, but globally: “Prior to starting Shortlist, I worked across Latin America, Europe, India and all over Africa. With all those experiences, I can tell you that the number of companies, big and small, that have onboarding programs like you’re about to experience is extremely rare. You guys are in the top 5% of businesses, large and small, that have the onboarding program that you’re launching.”

Mr. Muriuki closed the session with inspiring words about Momentum and the challenges it is trying to solve. “I don’t measure success by how well we are doing rather as a percentage of how much potential we are actualizing,” he said as he encouraged the MCL team to progress.

“There is no individual who has ever achieved anything significant without the input of a well-built team.” Job closed by saying that, “As we launch our new onboarding process, tomorrow is the dawning of a new day.” Karibu Momentum!

Special thanks to the team at Shortlist for helping us to design and implement our new onboarding program!